Preferring Nothing to Christ

IF

IF you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin on you today, if you love the Lord your God and follow his ways,
if you keep his commandments, his laws, his customs, you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to make your own.

Walter Brueggemann has written an interesting book, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise and Challenge in Biblical Faith, in which he explores Israel’s history of salvation through the dynamic of the promise of land, acquiring the land and staying in the land. As landless Israel wanders in the wilderness it is the promise of land which keeps them going. But with land comes responsibility. For the writers of Deuteronomy faithfulness to God and God’s commands is everything. Entering and being able to stay in the land both depend on this faithfulness.

The Deuteronomist writers put this speech in the mouth of Moses at the end of years of wandering in the desert. It’s a seminal speech and marks a physical and spiritual transition for God’s people. They stand at a boundary and are offered a choice. It’s a real choice. The three ‘if’ clauses reassuringly lay out exactly what is expected of the Israelites. If they are able to open their hearts and make a choice then they are promised life in all of its complexity and richness.

Choose life, then, so that you and
your descendants may live in the love
of the Lord your God,
obeying his voice and clinging to him:
for in this your life consists…

Our lives are made up of a myriad of small choices. God still speaks to us today, offering us choices. Baptism has bound us to the life of God and planted within us the capacity to ‘keep his commandments, his laws, his customs.’ It’s all within our grasp and promises us life.

Is God calling you to make a particular choice this Lent?

(Deuteronomy 30:15-20. Thurs after Ash Wednesday)

HOLY

The Lord spoke to Moses; he said: Speak to the whole community of the sons of Israel and say to them: ‘Be HOLY, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.’

If you set yourself the task of reading the Bible from cover to cover, you could be forgiven for losing enthusiasm when you get the book of Leviticus. At first sight, Leviticus reads as a complex handbook of rituals and ways of living that are at best peculiar and at worst very off-putting. It’s possible, however, to use one verse as a hermeneutical key and so find a way into the text: Love thy neighbour as thyself (Leviticus 19:18). You might have assumed that this comes from the New Testament, but it comes from Ch 17-27, known as the Holiness Code.

The careful details of the sacrificial system, the food laws and purity laws all have one goal and that is unity and LOVE. Leviticus is edited and shaped into its final form during the period of the Exile. This was a period of soul searching and dislocation for the Israelites. Faced with the feeling of confusion as to what the covenantal promises could possibly mean now, the Priestly circle of writers outline a code that is intended to safeguard love and restore hope. The Israelites are invited to image God: Be HOLY, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. This is possible for them through love of neighbour and a willingness to direct every part of their lives towards God.

All healthy societies have codes of behaviour and rituals. Our biblical ancestors were not unusual, or burdened, as some commentators suggest. The keeping of the law brings freedom. The Psalmist can say that the law is ‘honey in the mouth’, it gives ‘light for my path’ and ‘freedom to my heart’.

The message of Leviticus is that holiness is within our grasp. God invites us to be intentional in every part of our lives. Lent then is a time for looking at all the parts of our lives and seeing how best to integrate them. This can bring us wholeness and holiness.

How is God calling you to wholeness and holiness this Lent?

(Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18, Monday, First Week of Lent)

GIVE

GIVE us today, our daily bread.

The Liturgy of the Word in Lent takes us through some of the major themes of our salvation history. Many of the readings can be heard as an invitation to conversion of heart. The Our Father can be read as a guide to this conversion. It’s familiar petitions chart for us a path of simple holiness.

I am always struck that this prayer contains within it a petition for our physical needs: bread. We are used to reading this spiritually, but I imagine the first hearers of Matthew’s Gospel will have heard this very much as physical. Having enough bread to eat was a daily concern for many. Wheat and barley crops were some of the most important crops in the agricultural economy of Jesus’ day. There is a deeper meaning too in this petition in that Jesus is teaching us to ask the Father for all our needs.

With the rise of food poverty in our country, there are many families who cannot go to bed at night with an assurance that there will be enough food for the next day. Our Lenten Appeals meet a need that is increasing. When we pray for the coming of the kingdom in the Our Father it’s precisely these situations which come to my mind. When we pray ‘thy kingdom come’ we commit to working for that change.

How is God calling you this Lent to provide daily bread for others?

(Matthew 6:7-15, Tuesday, 1st Week of Lent)

FASTING

The people of Nineveh believed in God: they proclaimed a FAST and put on sack cloth, from the greatest to the least.

So many thoughts surface for me when I come to explore the concept of food and fasting. I am conscious of friends who have struggled with eating disorders, I am troubled by the rise of foodbank use in the UK and throughout the world there are communities facing severe food shortages due to long term conflict, war and drought. So how do we hear the language of fasting?

In all the major Faith traditions of the world fasting plays a significant part. In the story of Jonah fasting is used as communal activity to bring about a change of heart. It’s an interesting detail that even the animals join in with the fast. The story shows fasting as an effective tool for change.

In the monastic tradition an element of fasting is built into daily life. It’s not so much the quantity of food that is restricted, it’s more that meal times are set and ordinarily you can’t help yourself to what you fancy when you think you need it. For St Benedict the middle way is the key to food provision and consumption. He wants his monks to eat neither too much not too little.

Lent then can be a time for finding that middle way in our relationship with food. Over the years I have come to realise that time spent eating mindfully and really appreciating the meal in front of me is as important as eating less. However you approach it, fasting is a tool for changing your heart. It’s about small changes that will enable you to prepare and celebrate Easter with joy.

Is there a small change that you could make to help you prepare for Easter with joy?

(Jonah 3:1-10, Wednesday, First Week of Lent)

EMPTIED

Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God,
did not count equality with God something to be grasped.
But he EMPTIED himself, taking the form of a slave,
becoming as human beings are;
and being in every way like a human being,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death, death on a cross.

This ancient hymn in the Letter to the Philippians is a touchstone text of our faith. The hymn is framed by the invitation to me to make my own the mind of Christ. Whichever way I approach this text it’s the word ’emptied’ which always stands out for me. Christ here, freely and lovingly, empties himself of everything except the doing of his Father’s will.

I can place my Benedictine vows of Stability, Obedience and Conversion of Life solidly within this framework. Each requires that I empty myself in order to make space for God. In the vow of Stability I make space for God by committing to this community, in this place. In the vow of obedience I try to lay aside my own will to make space for God’s will as mediated through the Rule, the Scripture, my superior and my sisters. In the vow of conversion of life I make space for God by committing to inner growth, repentance and change.

When I hear this text on Good Friday I am in our monastic chapel which has been emptied of its usual furnishings. There’s a hollow sound in the acoustic and a stark reminder that the large wooden cross, made from trees from our garden, is now our sole focus.

How is Christ calling you this Lent to empty yourself and to make space for Him?

(Philippians 2:6-11, Palm Sunday)

DESERT

The Lord will always guide you, giving you relief in DESERT places. He will give strength to your bones and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never run dry.

Lent invites us into the desert and the Exodus experience of the Israelites.

I hear in Isaiah’s words the motif of the covenantal bond between God and Israel. While the demands are high and far reaching for Israel, God promises to sustain them.

Isaiah’s words were originally for a people in Exile. He holds out the hope of their triumphant return to their own land. This will need a change in political fortunes and also a change in their hearts and minds. If they can make this change they are promised strength in their bones and relief from what has been the ‘desert’ of their lives in Exile. The promise to Israel that they will be like a spring that never runs dry is such a helpful image for Lent. Lent is as much about our refreshment as our own desert experiences.

How do you hear God’s promise today?

(Isaiah 58:9-14, Saturday after Ash Wednesday)

COMPASSION

Now, now- it is the Lord who speaks- come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning. Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again for he is all tenderness and COMPASSION, slow to anger, rich in graciousness and ready to relent.

Each of the readings in the Liturgy of the Word for Ash Wednesday speak to me of a call to conversion and wholeness. They do this in slightly different ways. The Prophet Joel’s words are a rallying cry for a community in crisis. It is time for the community to turn back to the Lord. Their turning back is possible and desirable because God’s very being is compassion.

In Jewish thinking compassion is one of the highest virtues and marks of a faithful Jew. The word compassion (rahamanut) shares its root with the word for womb (rehem). The faithful keeping of Torah is a means by which the heart and soul are shaped in tenderness and compassion. The Torah binds in love, as a mother is bound to her child in the womb.

Lent is an invitation for us to turn our hearts and minds back to God. It’s an invitation to compassion for others and for ourselves.

How can you nurture compassion this Lent?

(Joel 2:12-18, Ash Wednesday)

BELOVED
And a voice came from heaven,
‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’

The Lent Lectionary pairs Mark’s account of the Transfiguration with the poignant story of Abraham and Isaac climbing Mt Moriah and preparing for sacrifice. Both Jesus and Isaac are beloved, only sons, both are following the path marked out for them. A relationship of love frames both stories.

Isaac is the child of promise and of Abraham’s old age:
God said, ‘Take your son, your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, where you are to offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall point out to you.’
These verses always move me.

There is a similar tenderness in the Father’s voice from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him’. These words are full of affirmation. Some years ago I read an article by Jesuit, Pat Davis, on the Psychology of Obedience. He made this comment:
It is very interesting that when God the Father speaks of Jesus it is always affirming. Now you would think that Jesus was the last person who needed affirmation, since he was fully human, fully mature, and yet each time we hear the Father’s voice speaking about his Son, it is very affirming, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’

So Lent then is an invitation to us all to move deeper into the mystery of God’s love and know that we too are beloved.

How would you most like God to show you that you are Beloved this Lent?

(Mark 9:2-10, Second Sunday in Lent)

ALMSGIVING

But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right is doing; your ALMSGIVING must be secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.

Lent begins in a potentially re-assuring place by offering us the three ancient spiritual tools of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Our Biblical ancestors knew these tools well. Faithfulness to the Torah consisted in making prayer, fasting and almsgiving the roots from which all else could grow. It was a way of life.

It’s easy to look at these three tools as Lent begins and to use them as a measuring stick. But what if we saw Lent not as a time to feel guilty, but more as an opportunity for deepening what is already embedded in our lives?

Matthew’s handling of these traditional practices moves our attention to our hearts and our motivations. This is where the real work of Lent begins. That Matthew uses the word secret ‘six’ times in this passage speaks to me of the inner work that God calls me to do. The invitation to almsgiving turns my attention from my own needs to the needs of others. We naturally think in terms of giving money or food to those in need. In many ways time is as precious a commodity as food or money. You may be in a position to give all three.

How is God calling you to give alms this Lent?

(Matthew 6:1-6. 16-18, Ash Wednesday)

I’ll be posting reflections each weekday in Lent. I have chosen key themes from the Liturgy of the Word.